Categories
Observations

World Theology 1

Nobody has the full picture of God, and though every perspective might be true, each is incomplete in and of itself, and every cultural perspective is needed to fully understand this global God.

As a personal example, if somebody wants to get to know me, they would of course have to spend time with me. But they could also ask my friends, family and acquaintances about me. My mother would talk about how I was mischievous and naughty as a child. My friends would talk about my love for baseball or playing the violin. My colleagues would talk about my publications and academic work. Many would know me as a world traveler and some would even have traveled with me. My spouse knows things about me that nobody else would. all of of them true of me? Definitely. Does anyone have the full picture of me? No – each will emphasize one thing over another or be missing certain pieces of my profile. In order to fully understand me, you would have to ask everyone who knows me, and then slowly, the whole picture would come together. Even spending time with me is insufficient because I would only relate to you in the way that is most meaningful and appropriate to you (I would not relate to my mother in the same way I relate with my students, and so forth). So it is with theology, which is the study of God. A European will have one perspective on God based on his or her history and interactions with him, an Asian will say another thing, an African another, and a Latino yet another. Nobody has the full picture of God, and though every perspective might be true, each is incomplete in and of itself, and every cultural perspective is needed to fully understand this global God. This is not relativism, even if two of the perspectives sound quite different from one another, just as my mother and my students offer two very different descriptions of me. Rather than giving us relativistic lenses, culture gives us instruments that help us see our Lord better.

Allen Yeh in Polycentric Missiology.

2 replies on “World Theology 1”

Comments are closed.